U.S. Particle Accelerator School
Beam by Design: Advanced Manipulation of Relativistic Electrons with Lasers course
Sponsoring University:
University of Texas, Austin
Course:
Beam by Design: Advanced Manipulation of Relativistic Electrons with Lasers
Instructors:
Gennady Stupakov and Erik Hemsing, SLAC; Spencer Gessner, Stanford University
Purpose and Audience
This course is an introduction to the latest development of advanced beam manipulation with lasers: the emerging concept of ‘beam by design’ in accelerator physics. The course is suitable for graduate students who are interested in marriage of particle accelerator technologies and laser arts. This course is, in particular, useful for those interested in accelerator-based light sources such as synchrotrons and free-electron lasers.
Prerequisites
A general understanding of classical physics and electromagnetism; the USPAS undergraduate-level course "Accelerator Physics" or equivalent; entry-level experience to run computer simulations.
It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that they meet the course prerequisites or have equivalent experience.
Objectives
The course focuses on the physics, challenges and promises relevant to the latest development of advanced beam manipulation with lasers. Lectures will review recent development of various techniques that rely on laser-based manipulation to rearrange electron distributions in 6D phase space. Upon completing this course, students should understand why and how one can rearrange particle distribution in 6D phase space to enhance the performance of accelerator-based scientific facilities.
Instructional Method
This course will offer a series of lectures during morning sessions, followed by afternoon computer lab sessions with the access to MATLAB. Homework problems will be assigned daily. The students will be required to use computer simulations and analytical approach to prepare a report relevant to one of the topics covered in the course. There will be no final exam.
Course Content
The lectures will review recent development of various techniques that rely on laser-based manipulation to rearrange electron distributions in 6D phase space. It will begin from basics of relativistic electron beams and lasers, their interactions in vacuum and undulators and radiation of modulated beam. This will be followed by exposition of various techniques to create nano-structures and imprint nano-correlations in relativistic electron beams and their applications in advanced accelerators, synchrotron light sources and x-ray free-electron lasers (such as generating short pulses in synchrotrons, generating fully coherent radiation, generating attosecond radiation, and generating mode-locked radiation in FELs, etc.) will be reviewed.
Reading requirements
Reading materials will be supplied in electronic form and posted on the website when the course is announced.
Credit Requirements
Students will be evaluated based on performance: homework assignments (40% of final grade), computer simulation (30% of final grade), final report (30% of final grade).
Credit is only earned when this one-week half course is taken with a second one-week half course and both are successfuly completed thereby earning 3 credit hours.
UT Austin course number & course title on transcript: PHY 396T (69875): ADV TOPICS IN ACCELERATOR PHYSICS
Indiana University course number and title on transcript: Physics 671, Advanced Topics in Accelerator Physics
Michigan State University course number: PHY 963
MIT course number: 8.790 "Accelerator Physics"